Can you smell the negative ions?" The novelist Richard Powers and I were sitting on the banks of a river in the Great Smoky Mountains, and I could scarcely hear him above the water crashing against the rocks. The sound was both violent and serene, like being trapped inside a white-noise machine. These collisions, he said, release negative air ions, electrically charged particles with beneficial health effects.
Sometimes he liked to wade into the river and sit among the rocks, letting the cold water pound his body. I took a deep breath, and the air did, indeed, smell fresher. Was I experiencing a surge in my serotonin levels, or am I just impressionable? Before I could decide, Powers was on to the next wonder. "Do you know your trees?" he asked.
Powers moved to the Great Smoky Mountains while writing "The Overstory," which tried to reduce our "human exceptionalism." His new book, "Playground," centers on the ocean.
Since the nineteen-eighties, Powers has built a reputation as a novelist of unusual intellectual curiosity and rangeas interested in probing the frontiers of technological innovation as in expanding the possibilities of fiction. He's written prize-winning, best-selling novels about computing, virtual reality, neuroscience, and nonhuman forms of consciousness, often focussing on the process of discovery and invention.
Denne historien er fra September 16, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra September 16, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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ART OF STONE
\"The Brutalist.\"
MOMMA MIA
Audra McDonald triumphs in \"Gypsy\" on Broadway.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
\"Black Doves,\" on Netflix.
NATURE STUDIES
Kyle Abraham's “Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful.”
WHAT GOOD IS MORALITY?
Ask not just where it came from but what it does for us
THE SPOTIFY SYNDROME
What is the world's largest music-streaming platform really costing us?
THE LEPER - LEE CHANGDONG
. . . to survive, to hang on, waiting for the new world to dawn, what can you do but become a leper nobody in the world would deign to touch? - From \"Windy Evening,\" by Kim Seong-dong.
YOU WON'T GET FREE OF IT
Alice Munro's partner sexually abused her daughter. The harm ran through the work and the family.
TALK SENSE
How much sway does our language have over our thinking?
TO THE DETECTIVE INVESTIGATING MY MURDER
Dear Detective, I'm not dead, but a lot of people can't stand me. What I mean is that breathing is not an activity they want me to keep doing. What I mean is, they want to knock me off. My days are numbered.